Blogs: Climate

Climate change is a major global concern whose impacts are felt locally. Our expertise can help you understand the impact of climate policies.

The social cost of carbon; it’s time to kill it

Social cost of carbon emissions CO2

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is misguided, increasingly irrelevant and should have been abandoned years ago, so argues our Director and Head of Modelling, Hector Pollitt.

What is the social cost of carbon (SCC)?
The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a hideous construct of mainst…

What if China said ‘no’ to new coal?

chinese coal climate change

Head of Modelling, Hector Pollitt, sends us a report from the United Nations climate change talks (COP24) in Katowice, Poland.
The mood going into COP24 has not been overly positive. Yes, there are record numbers of renewables installations, but global emissions are still increas…

Estimating the global value of stranded fossil fuel assets

the global value of stranded fossil fuel assetsassets

The momentum behind technological change in the global power and transportation sectors is overwhelming.
Our analysis, published in Nature Climate Change, suggests that between $1tn and $4tn could be wiped off the value of global fossil fuel assets by 2035.

This dramatic declin…

The end of energy as we know it

fossil fuels stranded assets

Jean-Francois is lead author of  Macroeconomic impact of stranded fossil fuel assets, published in Nature Climate Change last week.
The report highlights the significant macroeconomic and geopolitical consequences of continued investment in fossil fuels.  He is our guest blogge…

Trump tariffs will not bring back coal

When President Trump announced a tariff on imports of solar panels we immediately ran some figures through our macroeconomic model to assess the impact that the policy might have on the US energy system.
Our analysis shows that Trump’s tariff on solar panel imports, which came…

Reflections on COP23

It’s been a week since the Conference of the Parties (COP) in Bonn, so it must be time to start thinking about Christmas (or in my case this year, my wedding!). But before moving on completely it is worth spending some time reflecting on the events of the last few weeks.
COP23 wa…

The gap to 2°C: it’s narrower than most people think

Cambridge Econometrics’ projections suggest that the carbon emissions gap to 2°C might be 10 GtCO2e in 2030, notably less than projections by other research institutes, including those in the UNEP report published this week.  There is reason to be optimistic.
But why is our …